


Ever Live Young

by Salomonderiel



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Elizabethan Era, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, by which I also mean the canon of 'history'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26501497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salomonderiel/pseuds/Salomonderiel
Summary: In the late 16th Century, in the port Vlissingen, Joe (Joseph) and Nicky (Nicolas) ran into a certain famous English playwright.No, not that one. The other one.While Joseph and Nicolas find they fit in well with the scandalous and absurd Elizabethan theatre crowd, they always knew things never last as long as you wish they would. All things must change.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 17
Kudos: 76





	Ever Live Young

**Author's Note:**

> It's goddamn confirmed by the showrunners and actors that Nicolo and Yusuf KNEW WILL SHAKESPEARE, and then I see BARELY ANYTHING more said about this, save a few 'star-crossed lovers' references??? I could not let this stand. Nope. 
> 
> Based, for the most part, on real events. I shit you not. This happened. There's a Drunk History episode on it, I highly recommend watching. 
> 
> End notes for more specific details to what I changed for the sake of plot and emotions. And for a bibliography for the stuff I've quoted throughout.

_Netherlands, 1591_

Being accused of Catholicism was a habitual occurrence when you had an Italian accent because, as Joseph kept saying, men will always be fools, especially when it comes to religion.

That they were _right_ was mere coincidence. Besides, Nicolas could hardly have been called a practicing Catholic since, well. Since his first death had left him standing not before pearly gates, but in the same bloody battlefield.

Now, they found themselves in the port of Vlissingen, or Flushing, depending on the nationality of who you spoke to. It was currently the site of a coalition of English and Dutch forces, an attempt to keep back the ever-advancing Spaniards and their Catholic corruption. This could have something to do with why this particular accusation of Catholicism was followed by a dagger piercing Nicolas’ chest.

Fully aware that the sight of ungodly abilities would only worsen their situation, Joseph acted quickly, carrying Nicolas from the tavern and ignoring his own desires to revenge himself on those now raising toasts to the murder of one more Catholic.

“ _Pace, pace, Nicolo_ ,” Joseph muttered, letting his wounded beloved lean on him as they staggered to the nearest sheltered alley.

“Get this _merdoso_ thing out of me-”

“ _Si,_ let us add the scandal of witchcraft to your already blasphemous beliefs, shall we?”

Only when they were hidden from the sight of passers-by did Joseph finally lower Nicolas’s bloody form to the ground, the latter swearing out a storm as the blade caught against him at every movement. “A fish-blade,” Nicolas lamented, looking at it properly for the first time. “Of all the indignity – Yusuf, do not let me die from a fish-blade-”

“Hush.”

Joseph put one hand on Nicolas’ chest, and gripped the blade’s wooden handle with the other. “Are you prepared?”

Nicolas forewent an answer in favour of a scathing glance.

Wasting no more time, Joseph pulled out the offending blade with one swift motion. Nicolas swore once more, but began to breathe easier as the skin, now unimpeded, began to knit together. It was mere moments before all trace of the wound had vanished.

“Be you well now, _ya amar?”_

“ _Si, si_.”

Joseph smiled, pressing a quick kiss to Nicolas’ forehead. “Then come, we must find you new clothes-”

“Well, now. It seems there are still things on this earth capable of astonishing me.”

The voice, Dutch horrendously entangled with a strong English accent, struck Joseph much like the fish-blade had struck Nicolas. He stepped forwards between his prostate love and this new threat, hand reaching for his dagger. “Who passes here?”

The man was standing at the entrance to the alley, leaning casually against the crumbling brickwork. His doublet was vibrant, his blonde hair a mess, but his eyes were sharp and the rapier at his waist betrayed a danger that might not otherwise be attributed to someone so… foppish. “Now, then,” this man said, pushing himself from the wall and walking forwards with hands spread wide. “Either I have fallen to folly, and divinity does indeed walk this world, or you two are creatures far more sinister.” He came to a stop before them, fingers absently adjusting the laced frills of his shirt-sleeves. “So what be you? Friend, or fiend?”

Yusuf looked down at Nicolo who, still slumped against the wall and covered in his own blood, just shrugged.

“Whether we are your friend I know not, but I tell you, we are no fiends,” Joseph said cautiously. “I am but Joseph, and this be Nicolas.”

The Englishman smiled, wide and mischievous. “They call me Kit. Might I buy you drink? Something tells me you two have stories I sorely wish to hear.”

***

***

_London, 1598_

Joseph sat in the corner of the tavern, nursing a small ale in one hand and absently playing with a quill in the other. Shoreditch was hardly lacking characters to capture imaginations, yet he found himself unable to focus on any of the figures before him. So the feather stayed twisting in his fingers, and the parchment stayed blank.

Part of his distraction was easily understood. His eyes flicked up to any figure that approached his table, though no one showed him any interest, save to pass by to laugh with or fight against another. Or kiss. This was Shoreditch, after all, filled with actors and scoundrels alike.

It must have been the twentieth time that a figure came close enough to draw Joseph’s attention, that it was finally the one he had been waiting for. He beamed.

Nicolas stood out like a sore thumb amidst the theatre crowd that frequented the tavern – doublet simple in tone, none of the bright reds and vibrant embroidery that hung haphazardly on the scandalous figures around him. Elegant, not cheap. Prided for its endurance, not the glances it would earn him, it probably cost more than any other outfit in the place.

Joseph _knew_ it did. He’d bought it for him.

As Nicolas slid onto the bench beside him, pulling his cloth hat from his head, Joseph slid the ale towards him. “How is sweet John?” he teased, rewarded with a huff of laughter and a not-too-gentle knock of their shoulders.

“To quote our friend, ‘this Donne is un-done’,” Nicolas said. “His wealth, his honour, all attained, and yet willing to lose it all for his beloved.”

“I know the feeling.”

Nicolas knocked their shoulders together once more, but this time there was a tenderness to the action.

As he sipped at the ale, Joseph was content to just watch him.

Eventually, Nicolas spoke, his eyes and voice soft as he recounted the words he’d read earlier. “‘Twice or thrice had I lov’d thee, / Before I knew thy face or name … what thou wert, and who, / I bid Love ask, and now / That it assume thy body, I allow, / And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow … Then, as an angel, face, and wings / Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear, / So thy love may be my love’s sphere’.”

_Twice or thrice had I lov’d thee before I knew thy face or name…_ Later, Joseph would ask Nicolas to recount it again, would write the words beneath his attempts to imitate the irreplicable beauty of the man before him. “He should publish,” was all Joseph said for now, as he always did.

And, as always, Nicolas shook his head with a wry smile. “He keeps his words close to himself, sweet. He does not like to share that which he considers gifts but to a few.” He smiled wryly behind the flagon, eyes sparkling as he met Joseph’s gaze. “Not to mention what they might do to his reputation.”

Joseph laughed.

This line of conversation now concluded, Nicolas downed the ale – and Joseph knew it was not thirst that had him drinking so desperately. He waited until Nicolas had finished, again content to watch until his beloved was ready.

“Any sign of him, yet?”

Joseph shook his head. “No, not a whisper.”

Nicolas looked pained. “He said he wished to never see our visage again.”

“I know.”

“I’faith, he _yelled_ it.”

“I _know_.”

“I cannot understand-”

“The message was brief,” Joseph said, as he had said before. The strip of paper in question was in his pocket, crumpled to the point of being unreadable. “He said he had work to interest us, and that he wished to meet with us. That is all.”

“It has been five years-”

“ _I know!_ ” Joseph took a breath, and finally set his unused quill on the table. “I know, Nicolas. Only the man can tell us why he acts so. I am no soothsayer.”

“For the safety of all mankind, I feel. We can but imagine what you would be able to achieve, were you gifted with any further otherworldly abilities.” A tray was set before them, holding three large wooden flagons of golden liquid. “Alas, I have not had the time to travel to distant shores to retrieve for you the branch of an olive tree – as such, I hope an offering of Mistress Nell’s second-best ale will suffice.”

Shocked, Joseph looked up at the man before them. His clothes, much like Nicolas’, were demure in comparison to his compatriots – worn and practical, unassuming. Only one piece of jewellery adorned his hands, an item that Joseph knew was cheap but sentimental. And his face was different – Joseph found himself once again painfully reminded of the reality of time, as he saw the lines that aged the man he remembered as youthful and energetic.

“Well met, Will,” Joseph said, speaking softly, unsure whether his voice would obey him. “The beard suits you.”

The man before them laughed, and reached a hand to brush absently at it. “Indeed? Several years in, I find myself still undecided. Is there space for me at your table?”

“Always,” Nicolas said, with his usual, brutal, honesty.

Will slid down opposite them. Joseph looked across to Nicolas, to find the man’s gaze fixed on Will. It was understandable. To be cast out so, and welcomed back with so few words…

“This is no macabre performance,” Will said with a wry humour. “There is no poison in these cups.”

With a shared hesitancy, Joseph and Nicolas reached for their drinks in unison.

As ale went, it was… adequate. Joseph had never developed a taste for the distinctly northern beverage.

Beside him, Nicolas was once again drinking with a desperation that belied the state of his nerves.

Shooting him a sideways glance, of equal concern and warning, Joseph said, “Your note said you knew of work for us?”

He didn’t remember Will being much of a drinker, but he seemed to be drinking his ale with as much enthusiasm as Nicolas currently was. “Aye, Joe,” Will said, setting down a now empty cup and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Do you remember The Theatre? The home of the Chamberlain’s Men?”

Joseph and Nicolas exchanged a glance. They had been there not one year before, to see a performance of _Edward II_. It didn’t draw much of a crowd, these days, but it was a personal favourite, and a constant in the repertoire of Shakespeare’s troupe. “We remember.”

“The lease of the land was gained by Rich’s father, the late James Burbage, from the _esteemed_ Giles Allen. Since good sir Burbage’s passing, Allan has been… a little less than gracious. We have fallen to practising our craft on the boards of The Curtain.”

From his tone, it was clear that Will would prefer to be working in a farmer’s field, cows, sheep, and all.

None of this was news – the relocation of The Chamberlain’s Men was common knowledge throughout the city. Anyone who wished to see Shakespeare’s words performed had to know how to find them. “Forgive me, but I am yet to see how this appertains to us and our… abilities.”

Will held up a finger, asking for patience, and Joseph assented. Nicolas was as patient as ever.

“It has taken some time, but we have discovered a way around the obstacle that is master Allen,” Will said, and something in the way he said it had Joseph leaning forwards with a renewed interest. “Now, no man may dispute that Allen holds the land, that is as set in writing as the stars are set in the sky. But that is where his command ends. He owns the land, _not_ the theatre that sits upon it.”

Joseph was confused, to say the least. “Will,” he said, “I do not understand-”

He was silenced as a hand whacked the breath from him, a palm slamming into his sternum. Stunned – both physically and emotionally – Joseph stared at Nicolas, who, both hands outstretched as if to hold himself in place, was staring with wide eyes and slack jaw at Will. “ _William_ ,” he breathed, Italian accent once more twisting at his words. “Tell me you will not-”

With the shit-eating smile that Joseph dreaded, Will spread his hands wide. “As Kemp is fond of saying, where there is a will, you will find a way.”

Suspicious now, Joseph turned his attention from Will, to Nicolas, and back again. “What _way_ are you referring to?”

“Yusuf,” Nicolas said, looking at him with wide, desperate eyes, “he’s _talking about stealing the theatre_.”

“In fact _no_ , the key to this is that we are _not_ stealing,” Will corrected quickly. “We have established that we own the rights to the theatre. Just… not the land the theatre is on.”

As the truth of the words sunk into Joseph, he began to reach for his ale once again. “I have questions,” he enunciated carefully. “First of all – Will, how, by the powers of gracious _fucking_ Jove, do you plan on stealing a theatre?”

Will shrugged, as if the answer were a simple one. “One piece at a time, I imagine.”

_He imagines_. So Will had put as much thought into this as he put into most his escapades, then.

Joseph decided to let that answer pass for now. “Second – have you considered that in order to enact this plan, you will have to, at the very _least_ , become trespassers on the land of a man who undoubtedly already wishes you hung, drawn, and quartered?”

Once again, Will turned to him with a brightness in his eyes and a sharpness to his smile that had Joseph dreading what he would next hear. “Of course I have,” Will said, with a tone of undoubtedly affected innocence. “Why, that is precisely the reason I wish to hire _you_.”

***

They took the job. Of course they did. It was Will asking, after all.

Which was how Joseph found himself sat on a wall, scimitar once again by his hip, watching as a group of actors and carpenters swiftly disassembled a theatre and loaded it, board by board, onto carts to be transported across the Thames.

What made the scene all the more absurd was that one amongst the number had suggested, in manner of a disguise or intimidation, to cloak themselves in the most gory, most dramatic suits of armour their prop stores held.

All-in-all, it seemed the theatre was being slowly eaten by a horde of undead soldiers.

So much so that when Will approached, it was not until he removed his paint-stained helm before Joseph recognised him. “How now, good Joe?” Will called cheerfully. “Where be sweet Nick?”

“He sups with sirrah Donne,” Joseph explained, nudging himself along the top of the wall so Will could jump up beside him, clanging armour and all. The troupe bought their costumes cheap, often the unwanted, misshapen items soldiers and armouries discarded, and it showed. “It appears he was needed to consult on a divine matter of some immediacy. He will join us anon.”

Will laughed. “’Tis bizarre, to see one of you without the other. Like a play without words.”

“Boring?”

“Unsettling,” Will corrected with a smile.

“Not unlike your men in their costumes.”

“They do their work, to dissuade the common man from interfering.”

“If the common man is tricked, then what am I?”

Will looked at him sharply, his gaze, as ever, seeing far more than Joseph would wish. “You are decidedly uncommon, good Joe. That is beyond question.”

The words alone were neither a compliment, nor a criticism, and it was clear Will meant them to be so. Joseph found he was equally unclear how to respond.

It was unsurprising that Will would be the one with the words to fill the silence. “I find I do not wish for an apology from you, as much as I previously would have thought,” he said, looking out as the next cart of theatre pieces rattled down the street. “Yet, neither do I feel I can offer an apology of my own.”

For a moment, Joseph examined the face of the man he had once known so well. There was a hardness there that had been forged in the years between, and Joseph felt sorry he had not been there to ease Will’s way. “We would not ask an apology of you,” he said, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around the man in gesture of comfort. “Will, we could never blame you for how you felt, not when we have felt them ourselves a hundred times over. Believe me, if we could exile ourselves from us, we would have, countless times.”

It was a hard truth, one that many people did not understand when they learned of the ‘blessing’ of Yusuf and Nicolo’s longevity. But it was a truth Joseph felt Will, of all, would be able to understand.

Will met Joseph’s gaze, and Joseph saw there the very understanding he craved. “I pity thee, but I cannot console thee,” Will said. “I stand by what I said. No man deserved eternity more than he.”

“I know it is a very poor consolation, but I believe he will have an eternity, in his own way. Men still recite his words the world wide, as they will for a long, long time yet.”

This peace between them was yet hesitant, and as Joseph spoke, as he watched Will’s head fall, he was worried he had broken it already.

“No, but don’t you _see?_ ” Will demanded, one had clasping at Joseph’s shoulder, the other gesturing to the breadth of mankind that surrounded them. “There are the words he wrote, and the words he had _taken_ from him! What he _could_ have penned – I try to do him proud, but there was a bravery in Kit that will never be found in me. I find myself writing characters that fall to the level of the crowd’s expectations, rather than rising to meet my own hopes – find myself hiding in the safety of pleasing my audience, rather than making them _think_.” He buried his head in his hands, and Joseph raised a hand to reach out – but found himself held back by something invisible, something as yet unspoken. “I fear the cost of bravery. I fear what would happen to my Anne, were I to join my son in death. So no, Joseph, I cannot ask forgiveness from you and Nicolas, not when I fail Kit more and more with each line I write than you ever could have in one night.”

This grief, Joseph knew. But he was never the one to comfort, that was always Nicolas’ role. He had a patience and a mercy that, in five hundred years, Joseph was still only starting to learn.

Then he remembered something, and smiled.

“‘The quality of Mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes’.”

Will looked up at him. “Those are my words. You know my words?”

Joseph shrugged. “Nicolas says them often enough. I would must be deaf, to not know them by heart.” As Will let out a harsh breath, something caught between a laughter and a hiccough, Joseph smiled. “Neither of us particularly enjoyed Shylock’s fate,” he confessed, “but we heard him betoken his humanity, as did all your audience. In that way, if not others, your brave Shylock far outperformed Kit’s poor Barabas.”

He let his hand rest between them, palm up. An offering.

Will took it.

Before them, the theatre continued to be dismantled, pieces carried away to be rebuilt elsewhere.

“He said – threatened, mayhaps – to write on you two,” Will said, eventually.

“By Jove. A threat, indeed.”

Will laughed, his hand tightening in Joe’s. “It is, in fact, been one of his unfinished plans that I have attempted.”

Joseph winced. “Ah, your ‘star-crossed lovers’?”

“Zounds!” Will cried, rocking with laughter. “You wound me beyond measure, Joe! I do pride myself I can create a character more like to life than _that_. No, these attempts are those that have yet to see the light of day. I find there are too many stories in you to fit on one stage.”

“Then give us a comedy, kind Will,” Joseph requested. “At least in fiction, let us live in a comedy.”

Will smiled again, bashful, a hand running through his hair. “I did pen one thought… a pair too wise to woo peacefully…” he closed his eyes, eyes darting behind their lids, scanning an expanse of works still held in the writer’s mind. “ _There is a kind of merry war between them – they never meet, but there is a skirmish of wit’._ They ask of each other, _‘For which of my bad parts didst though first fall in love with me? For all of them together – which maintain a state so evil they admit no good part to intermingle within. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me? I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will…”_

He trailed off, looking at Joseph with the eyes of a child.

“‘Suffer love’,” Joseph repeated, musing on the phrase with a smile. “A good epithet. I will use that one.”

Will laughed once more, briefly tightening his grip on Joseph’s hand once more before finally letting it go.

“Well, look at this,” Will said with a sudden joy, “They do say you needs must only speak of the devil for him to appear! Well met, sweet Nick! How is our friend Donne?”

Joseph turned – there, indeed, was Nicolas, one hand casually on his sword belt, the other resting on his satchel. A satchel, Joseph knew, would be filled with the books he had exchanged with John. Nothing light, either in content or weight – a pleasant reminder of not just the wise head on Nicolas’ shoulders, but the muscles beneath his clothes.

His appraisal of Nicolas’ form must not have been as subtle as hoped, for Nicolas met his gaze with a raised eyebrow, and beside him, Will let out a low, suggestive whistle.

Joseph kicked him, but it only seemed to incentivise Will’s amusement.

“Donne struggles to fight his love, as always,” Nicolas answered when close enough. Joseph reached out a hand and Nicolas clasped it briefly, the touch a brief but sufficient reminder of all affection that had passed between them, and all that was to come. “He had some… _pointed_ questions concerning the relation both the body and soul have with love. I do not think my answers made his choice any easier.”

Joseph stifled an indecent smile. He knew exactly how Nicolas felt about love – for all he had been a Catholic priest, Nicolas would always profess that love, even spiritual, would never be content to reside in thoughts alone, but must be expressed through the physical. In _all_ ways.

“Do you have any more of his sweet words to share?” Joseph asked, and when Nicolas met his gaze, he knew his love understood _exactly_ the line of thought Joseph was pursuing.

Joseph winked. Nicolas sighed. “I do not visit my friend simply to find more ways with which to woo you,” he chastised, and Will laughed.

“I am sure you two kill each other more with your wit than you ever did with your swords,” he said.

Joseph held Nicolas’ gaze, and smiled. “We are too wise to woo peacefully,” he repeated, and felt the gentlest of movements, as Will, but for a moment, swayed towards him.

“I, wise?” Nicolas mused, as he rounded them to lean on the wall by Will’s other side. “Perhaps. _Your_ wisdom, I am less confident of.”

“Peace, peace!” Will cried, holding his hands up as if to hold them from each other. “I will none of it. From enemies to lovers indeed, half the time I believe it to be a lie, that you never stopped quarrelling, merely changed the type of swords you use!”

Joseph, fully understanding his friend’s meaning, made a suggestive gesture with his hands. Nicolas responded in kind, but with far less lust and far more animosity.

“Perhaps you should have spent the night with John, and his sweet words,” Joseph suggested. “Those divine poems on love, that he only _gifts_ to a certain few-”

“ _Vaffanculo_ and take your _cornuto_ tongue with you, you pissant _cazzo-!_ ”

And with that Will was laughing so hard Joseph reached for him, hand pressed to the man’s chest to keep him from falling from the wall and causing injury. On Will’s other side, Nicolas was doing the same, a slow smile revealing his affected anger for what it was.

“We have missed you too, young Will,” Nicolas said softly, as Will’s laughter finally began to quieten. “Seeing your plays is not the same as seeing you.”

Will smiled at him, with a warmth anyone would be lucky to receive. His hand went to rest on Nicolas’, the other once again clasping Joseph’s. “I have been told you quote my work, with some frequency.”

Rather than deny it, Nicolas began to recite. “‘In him those holy antique hours are seen, / Without all ornament, itself and true, / Making no summer of another’s green, / Robbing no old to dress his beauty new’.”

Joseph finished the verse. “‘And him as for a map doth Nature store, / To show false Art what beauty was of yore’.” 

There was a breadth of silence, in which Will stared between the two of them. “Very few have read those sonnets,” he said eventually. “I have given about but very few manuscripts.”

“What can we say,” Joseph said, shrugging. “We like your work.”

On his other side, Nicolas took Will’s hand between his. “We have lived long enough to see what is lost, and what continues to live. You must know, sweet Will, that your words will be quoted by far more men than just us two.”

Will’s hands may have shaken where they grasped Joseph and Nicolas’, but there was a certainty in his gaze as he looked out across the theatre they had begun to reclaim. And he smiled. “Then perhaps your immortality is not so unique after all.”

***

***

_London, 30 th May, 1593_

The tavern, as it ever was after a production, was piled to the rafters with people. There was almost certainly as much ale being spilled on the floor and clothes as was actually being consumed. It was hard to hear anyone talk over the sounds of raucous singing and laughter.

Which was why, Nicolas had reassured him after, he should not blame himself for acting too late.

Joseph had seen the man approaching, had seen the way his hand reached for his dagger. Joseph had risen to his feet to draw his own weapon, but by the time he had cut the man’s throat, the dagger’s blade had already pierced Kit’s chest three times, and his temple once.

The tavern should had fallen silent, but it didn’t. No one noticed, not at first. As Kyd screamed the sound was lost to the pre-existing cacophony. As Nicolas helped Joseph carry the wounded Kit from the building into the dark, silent night, only they and Will knew his slumped figure was not just that of another drunkard.

Nicolas took Kit from him, lowering the man to the wall, as Kyd and Will hovered, one with his face in his hands, the other swearing bloody vengeance on the whole world.

Joseph waited, watching, knowing what was about to be said even before Nicolas turned back to look at him. “Gone. He’s gone.”

Blood flowed over Kit’s face as if his heart still pumped, his eyes still bright, lips parted as if still capable of holding breath. But as Nicolas leant back, his hand fell heavy to the ground. A dead weight.

Joseph fell to his knees, head falling against his chest, as he heard Nicolas mutter the last rites just as he had done too many times before.

Will landed in the dust beside them, grabbing at the hands that Joseph knew would already be turning cold, losing all the gentle softness they had in life. “And?” Will said, his young voice so calm with determination. “What matters death?”

Joseph reached out a hand, resting it on Will’s shoulder as Nicolas closed Kit’s eyes for a final time. “He will not come back, Will, you must know this.”

Will shook the hand from his shoulder, teeth bared and eyes burning with furious tears. “I know _no_ such thing!” he yelled, fists clenched as he looked between Joseph, Nicolas, and the ever-sleeping Kit. “If you, why not him?” he said, once again reaching to take Kit’s hands in his. Already they had taken on the pallor of marble – the texture would follow. “If not him, then why you? Why do _you_ get it, but not him?”

Nicolas, now finished commending Kit’s soul to a God the man had not believed in, leant back against Joseph’s side. “Will-”

_“He deserves it more!_ ”

The yell echoed from the buildings around them.

Joseph knew what followed, but Nicolas had always had more hope in him than Joseph ever could. He tried to protect him, wrapping his arms around Nicolas as the man leant forwards. “ _Nicolo, lascialo, lascialo-_ ”

“Will-”

“No,” Will cut in, his voice dark and heavy with rage. His hands moved endlessly over Kit’s own, as if he could make them hold him once more, eyes fixed on the dead man’s face in constant search for the soul he’d loved. “No. Not one word, _not one_. You have no use, you have _failed_.”

_“Will-_ ”

But Will shook his head. He closed his eyes tightly, and started to cry. “You are not welcome here anymore.”

Saltwater tracing tracks down his own cheeks, Joseph pulled Nicolas up with him as he rose. The man struggled in his grasp but he pulled him tight, holding him close, as they left their friends to mourn without them.

It would have been nice, for once, to mourn with them. Maybe one day they would not have to flee a dead friend’s side. But, as Nicolas sobbed against his shoulder, as Joseph led him to their rooms, feeling hollow and broken, he knew that day would not come soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Bibliography: 
> 
> ‘My love shall in my verse live ever long’ – Sonnet 19, Shakespeare   
> ‘Twice or thrice had I loved thee’ – Air and Angels, John Donne   
> ‘The quality of mercy’ – The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare. The character of Shylock is from the same, and Barabas is from Kit’s corresponding The Jew of Malta.   
> ‘A pair too wise to woo peaceably’, ‘There is a kind of merry war’ etc – Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare. Specifically, the characters of Beatrice and Benedick.   
> ‘In him those holy Antique hours are seen’ – Sonnet 68, Shakespeare.
> 
> Will was not with Kit when he died, nor was Kyd. He died surrounded, most likely, by those who had been instructed to kill him. I have never liked that thought. Kit was absolutely an atheist, and absolutely loud and bold in his beliefs. 
> 
> Donne was, indeed, at this point, starting to fall hopelessly in love with the woman he would marry, and consequently lose his position, respect, and fortune for - even being arrested for a short time before he could prove the marriage was legal. Also, his views on love and religion? This man and Nicky would have got on so goddamn well, you cannot convince me otherwise. 
> 
> There is no documentation about the relationship Will and Kit had. But we do know they knew each other and that Will had great respect for the man and his work, from the frequent references to Marlowe's writing Shakespeare would continue to use in his plays and poetry. 
> 
> I have a whole essay in my head about Shakespeare's sonnets and the idea of immortality through writing. Read Sonnet 19 at least, I beg of you. 
> 
> Okay that's all. Thank you for reading!


End file.
